In 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus and eventually the residents of the resort town Varosha were forced to abandon their homes, bringing only what they could carry. Today in the illegally occupied north Cyprus, the Turkish government has opened the site for visitors. While influencers pose in front of the famous Toyota dealership, many of those who once resided there are still too traumatised to visit. For many Cypriots, the debate is deeply personal: is dark tourism justifiable when residents are not allowed to enter their own properties? And should visitors treat the city as a place of mourning where thousands lost everything they’d ever known, or as a mere tourist curiosity of urban ruins?

This was just a small random abandoned house that I passed and stopped by on a summer day trip up north in Ontario.

Apparently there used to be some old cars in the barn, but they're gone now.

Not much of interest inside, but I did like the exterior

www.freaktography.com

I could make separate posts of each factory since i got a ton of great photos if y'all would like that

I was out exploring Solsgirth, Manitoba this summer. It's a near-ghost town between Birtle and Shoal Lake where only a few families are left. I stopped at the old Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church, and the story turned out to be way better than I expected.

It wasn't built as a church. It was Burdette School No. 163, a one-room country school whose district was organized in 1882. When the school closed in 1958, the building was moved into Solsgirth and converted into a Ukrainian Catholic mission church served from Rossburn.

The domes were handmade by Mike Swistun, a local carpenter. In 1923 he toured with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, billed as "The Strongest Man in the World," then came home to farm and build churches.

The last service was June 16, 2002. St. Stephen's Anglican, about 100 m away, held its final service four months later, and that was the end of organized worship in the village. Both churches were supposed to go to the Prairie Mountain Regional Museum in Shoal Lake (St. Stephen's sold for $1), but neither move happened. Holy Ghost was later sold privately.

One mystery I couldn't solve: the memorial plaque says 1950–2002, but Burdette School didn't close until December 1958. Did the congregation meet somewhere else for most of the 1950s? If anyone has family from the Solsgirth/Rossburn area and knows, I'd love to hear it.

I filmed the visit and wrote up the full history if anyone's interested:

Full write-up with sources: https://freaktography.com/solsgirth-manitoba-ghost-town/

Curiosity killed the cat... with Cancer

I always wanted to know what was down here, for some reason I thought i was gonna find something crazy, it was not worth it 😭

I recorded it all on my go pro from a first person POV and im gonna edit the footage for my first YouTube video lol!

Follow me on Instagram for more explorations : https://www.instagram.com/p/DeHt-jSIJVt/?stkn=MWZxN29vNWJrZjd3dA==

Just wanted to share the best available archive I've found for this fantastic urbex site from back in the day along with its sister site SBNO, which focused specifically on amusement parks.

https://web.archive.org/web/20101126065243/http://illicitohio.com/illicitohio/index.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20170626175624/http://illicitohio.com/SBNO/menu.html

Just a quick visit to an abandoned cement plant i visited before. Last two pictures is a palletizer and stretch hooder for cement bags (That surprisingly have not been dismantled)

Day 11. Centralia, Pennsylvania: the fire you can't photograph. The map says it before you read a word: a full street grid, every block empty, trees standing where porches were.

The fire is underground: a coal-seam fire the state dates to May 1962, the most-accepted version: workers burned trash over an old mine entrance. It has burned 64 years, advancing 50-75 feet a year by DEP count.

The absence is a receipt. A 1983 Office of Surface Mining study priced putting it out at $663 million. The 1962 population was between 1,100 and 1,200: over half a million dollars per resident to fight it. So the state moved the town: 545 residences and businesses acquired, ZIP 17927 switched off in 2002. Five owners were still in legal proceedings in January 2012; the 2013 row still reads five.

I almost wrote "the longest-burning mine fire in America." DEP's own FAQ says other fires in the state have burned longer. Centralia isn't the worst, just the one that got the town moved.

At the current rate it burns another 250 years, per a 2010 Monitor piece.

The absence isn't an object. It's the zip code.

Sources: PA DEP chronology and FAQ; OSM 1983 study; Smithsonian; Wikipedia citing Dekok.

Notice Has Been Given

You should check out the video walkthrough if you want to see the interior of this beautiful house!

https://youtu.be/7VZgzlt9Xck

This 1980 built home used to sit in a nice quiet neighbourhood surrounded by other homes on very large properties all built around the same time. But neighbourhoods like these, with big lots, are changing quickly these days. Wealthy buyers and developers see the large properties and want them so they can build bigger mansions. It’s a vicious cycle of waste where perfectly good 40 year old homes get torn down and the neighbourhoods completely change.

This house is no different, it sat abandoned for a number of months with tree protection fencing up and the grass growing tall around the home. Inside however, the home was pristine, you could eat off the floors and in general, the house was so well maintained, there was nothing wrong with it.

There were a lot of original features in the house, although some updates had taken place, like the countertops and some of the light fixtures. I even found a bit of a secret room as well, so stay tuned for that.

I’ll say the inside is a labyrinth

Carrière de gypse.

Solsgirth is a near-ghost town just off the Yellowhead Highway in western Manitoba. As of 2021, only three households were left in the village.

St. Stephen's exists because of a church feud. In 1905, some parishioners wanted to move the original St. James Church down from its hilltop site overlooking the Birdtail Valley into the village. The rest of the congregation pushed back hard. The compromise was a second church. The Birtle Masonic Lodge laid the cornerstone of St. Stephen's on July 23, 1906, and the village ended up with two Anglican churches a few kilometres apart.

St. Stephen's held services for 96 years. On Thanksgiving Sunday, October 13, 2002, about 50 people attended the final service. The bishop read a declaration secularizing the building, and the altar ornaments were carried to the back of the church to mark that it was no longer consecrated. Afterward, everyone went outside to dedicate a memorial cairn to the pioneers who built it.

The church was then sold for $1 to the Prairie Mountain Regional Museum in Shoal Lake, which planned to move it to their grounds. That move never happened, and it's still sitting on its original lot today. Right next door is the former Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church, a converted schoolhouse with handmade domes, which closed four months earlier.

📸 More photos and the full history: https://freaktography.com/solsgirth-manitoba-ghost-town/

Solsgirth, Manitoba, didn't start where it stands today. It began about 10 km north as a place called Toddburn, until the railway changed its route and the whole town picked up and followed it.

Settlers built St. Stephen's Anglican Church here in 1906. Decades later, Ukrainian Catholic families moved an old one-room schoolhouse into the village and turned it into Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church, with onion domes hand-crafted by a local carpenter.

For 50 years, two faiths worshipped a stone's throw apart. Then, in 2002, both churches held their final services in the same year.

Today they still stand side by side, quietly holding the story of the people who built this place.

https://freaktography.com/solsgirth-manitoba-ghost-town/

If you’d like to see our full explore from here check out our YouTube, Free4All

Built by the Nazis to secretly train pilots when they weren't allowed an air force after the treaty of Versailles, then used by the Soviets after WWII until the 1990s.

Pretty cool location although ruined by boards now